What We Think We Know Really Isn’t Real

Nothing can be dealt with meaningfully without first stating the candid, uncomfortable personal truth of the situation.  ~ Alpesh Bhatt

Yesterday an article by John Kotter that was originally published in the Harvard Business Review in 1995 resurfaced on LinkedIn:  Leading Change:  Why Transformation Efforts Fail.  Many of the current readers’ comments support his model of change and agree with the “errors” we are making.  We seem to be “drinking the kool aid” that apparent experts give us.  Although Kotter talks about the importance of commitment, leaders “walking the talk” and makes the distinction between leadership and management, his focus appears to be on external tasks and more towards the “managing” change aspects of the continuum.  No wonder most change efforts continue to fail.  We are madly trying to maintain external order through change!

We are funny creatures.  We still work with the same beliefs and intact internal structures and expect transformation.  Kotter is no different:  He is interpreting what he observes through the lens and limitations of his belief system.  We see what we believe.  Perhaps we can hit pause and ask the question:  “What can we learn from this?” deriving wisdom from our experience and realize maybe it’s time to let go of our past concepts and look beyond our filters.  Not doing so maintains the status quo and digs us into deeper trenches.  We give ourselves over to external authorities and rules, when our leader, love and truth, is within.  We are here to learn to shift our focus from the effect – what we see in the physical – to the cause, our consciousness within.  This moves us from “doing” things to “being” a creator.

One primary “error” we continue to make stems from the belief that organizational or societal transformation results from actions directed at that which we want to change.  Transformation results only from our own personal transformation; the only people we can change are ourselves.  This is not just changing our behaviors as many leadership models would have us believe; it is change from the core of our being starting with accepting our true nature.  Truth be told – all transformation is an inside job and some “experts” have seemingly not engaged in self-awareness or personal transformation.  They’ve watched from the sidelines and claim understanding without the scar tissue of personal experience.  How can they possibly know what they are talking about and prescribe to us?

As described last December, we are in a global breakdown that precedes the potential for breakthrough.  The choice is ours.  We have an addiction to left-brain understanding (logical, linear) that locks us into a world of division and separation based in the past because this is how the left-brain perceives reality.  What the left brain does really well is filter out information that does not fit our beliefs and programs; it keeps us “safe.”  The heart is the source of consciousness and the right brain sees holistically.  As beliefs systems dissolve, truth arises.

Our choice is to release all concepts that divide the world into right-wrong, good-evil and dark-light and begin to see all polarities as complimentary opposites that are meant to be balanced and integrated.  An example that comes to mind is the polar view on whether Edward Snowden is a traitor or a whistleblower.  It seems that he is both.  What does this say for the relevance of the “rule of law” that is the foundation of governance in the USA?  Rule of law is great, until it/we violate the universal laws of oneness, uniqueness and free will – the cornerstones of love.  Love is the basic principle of the universe; the only Universal Law is that of Love.  Living Love is Universal Leadership.

Love brings Light into Form

More than anything we long to contribute to the ever unfolding creation of Love, our own never-ending evolution.  “Love” means to acknowledge and accept the inherent unity and oneness of all that exists and that life is our mirror.  What we put out, we get back – giving is receiving – all relationship dynamics are mutual.  Everything in life is always a message that we either resist (challenge/discomfort) or embrace (joy/peace), even what is “bad” or “ugly.”

Love cares about and focuses on the dignity and well-being of all because we are one, inherently connected with mutual interdependence. Life.

Love understands without judgment, comprehends with compassion because we are a unique expression of Love that is our purpose, our contribution to life’s unfolding.  Pursuit of Happiness.

Love respects without control, grants full freedom of choice because we inherently have free will and self-determination.  Liberty.

Love responds by being present with now, acting with the neutrality of basic trust and grace to whatever comes because we inherently desire to continuously grow and evolve.

Being present is without needs, wants, desires, and expectations, wide open to responding to the truth of a situation.  It is the complete acceptance that by being with what is, our true nature, we are the co-creators of our life experience.  With presence we allow ourselves to be moved by and be the movement of love, we are the light of the world.  Love is all there is.  Life is grace-full when we allow and surrender to the messages it is bringing us.  Love is always a voluntary choice.

Love is what we seek.  We need to look no further because what we seek is within us.  Become aware of what we bear inside; seeking oneSelf is the path of Self-realization, our realized potential.  Being the “best” we can be as human beings is the only vision that matters and is the core vision of true leaders.  The leader is within; we only truly lead when we are connected to and live the Truth of our highest nature as the living emissary of divinity within.

Love conquers all.  Let us surrender to love.  ~ Virgil

Humanity’s purpose in life is to directly, fully and completely integrate our spiritual, divine nature into our physical being.  Incarnation means the embodiment of “spirit”; incarnate is fully human and fully divine, a whole and complete human being that we already are.  There are three primary ways that we separate from our divine nature:   Self-betrayal – betrayal or sabotage of our true nature.  Self-abandonment – abandon or ignore our true nature.  Self-deception – deny or doubt the reality of our true nature.  At the same time, our primal fears for our external experience are betrayal, abandonment and inadequacy (deception).  Our lives are journeys of Self-discovery – the discovery of the Universal Self as intelligent, loving and purposeful.  Universal Leadership is being one’s Universal Self in unity with all in conscious co-creation for the greatest good of all.

Kiss the Illusion Goodbye

The best possible actualization of one’s inherent potential is not the acquisition of external, material possessions, identity or goal.  It is to give, to use, what is within, one’s purpose and destiny.  To focus on the external is serving the past, our social-cultural inheritance and social-religious hatreds and fears.  What is our legacy as leaders?  Supporting others to lead their own lives, claim their own power and realized potential?  Or, shoring-up our own image and power as “a leader”.

Perhaps change is less about fixing a broken world and more about uncovering a hidden wholeness in all events, all organizations and all people and remembering our personal power to make a difference.  ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

We dream our future into being.  Our stories empower or diminish.  We can change the story that we hold about ourselves and one another to one of greater freedom and possibility.  From the expanded consciousness of our hearts and love, we see and intend the possibilities of our highest hopes and dreams:  reclaim spirituality from religion, replace materialism with abundance and war with peace, establish governance that embodies justice, equity and compassion, and ensure that nature preserves its self-regenerating capacity.  We are the source of all good things.

CTFD

I recently “happened” on the “latest” parenting practice:  CTFD.  CTFD means “calm the fuck down.”  It applies to all of us in all of our relationships and with life.  See a positionality (e.g., liberal/conservative) you disagree with?  CTFD.  It is only with neutrality that a solution will emerge.  We have to allow all and not defend or justify our viewpoints.  Judgment, resisting, fighting anything locks the polar/opposition dynamic in place – look at the gridlock in Washington DC.  CTFD.

Recently, Eric Michael Johnson pointed out that over the years Darwin’s work on evolution has been distorted.  In The Descent of Man, Darwin actually argued that humanity has succeeded because of sharing and compassion – the survival of the nicest – communities with the greatest number of sympathetic members flourish the best.  Johnson also pointed out that modern science has verified the importance of cooperation [not competition] in human evolution and our ability to thrive.  Another article describes how selfish traits would have made us extinct.  Maybe we are on our way.  The choice is always ours.

Our gift is not an attempt to save the world, rather to fully belong to the world.  ~ Bill Plotkin

The Nature of Transformation

Self-love is the acknowledgement, acceptance and embracing our totality of being:  balancing and integrating body, mind, heart and soul, past and future in the now.  The paradox is that when we release all concepts, when there is nothing to seek or change, we are transformed.  There is nothing to change when we live without needs, wants, desires, or expectations; when we live in complete neutrality and openness to life, trusting the inherent goodness of all experience as Love calling us home.  There is never betrayal of trust, only betrayal of expectations.

On this journey, what’s been the most painful for me?  I am deeply saddened by the realization that the vast majority of us (myself included) don’t (know how to) connect and relate heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul allowing the free flow and expression of Love.  We have (unconsciously) created our personal and collective feelings of isolation and suffering.  Terrorized at the prospect of this kind of intimacy and the strength it requires, revealing one’s heart and soul with the lack of the mind’s control, we hide behind the rules of our roles.

Perhaps we have experienced that when we do express our soul, we are “punished” – our truth labeled “fantasy” and “out of touch with reality.”  We retreat and spend our entire life dying a slow and painful death knowing only separation from the Self within that fulfills us.  When we deny another’s expression of Love:  care/oneness, understanding/uniqueness, respect/choice and presence/growth, we deny our own.  When we embrace our own essence, we embrace the essence of all.  Our labels and roles are not who we are.  What we do is not our purpose.  Our purpose is our soul’s expression of an aspect of Love.  Our hope lies in our reclaiming our soul, our essence, our unique love.

Because our need for a purposeful life is inherent, the mind tries to turn our soul purpose into a “role”, a fragment of what we are rather than allowing it to be our essence, the core of being in every moment of life.  Our Love is our contribution to Life.  Our soul’s purpose is not our defined and frequently “monetized” role.  How much of how you “show up” is defined by role expectations?  When do you allow yourself to be yourSelf?  As Charlie and Edie Seashore taught throughout their career:  We are the intervention.  Being our Love is the greatest contribution and service to the world.

We don’t “have” a soul with possession by the ego; we are a soul.  This is not about the death of the ego – our personality is part of our divine expression.  It’s about the death of the ego’s concerns about and fixations on approval, judgment and control.  These negate the aspects of care, understanding and respect inherent in Love.  It is also not about transcendence – seeking to leave an “undesirable” part of us behind especially the human condition.  Our experience of painful situations is our seat of compassion and wisdom.  It is about wholeness, unifying the physical and spirit and life as interdependent, emergent and co-arising.  This is about being here, now and opening and allowing love to move us and move through us.  Leading as Love is living from our soul, calling forth the inner leader that we are.

Do we like it when another makes choices for us or when we are judged by another for our choices?  Of course not.  Then why do we continue to try to impose our personal choices on others (e.g., abortion, same-sex marriage)?  They don’t need our approval any more than we need theirs.  Judgment, approval and control are not love.  CTFD. Our uniqueness and free will are sacred gifts and integral aspects of the Universal Law of love.

For just one day or even one hour notice your mind’s judgments, approval and control.  Do your thoughts help or hinder your Love, being the “best” human being that you are?  Just observe how much of your “life” is governed and directed by giving or receiving judgment, approval and control.  What might life be like without these thoughts and beliefs, allowing what is to be?

Compassion is the ultimate flowering of love.  The ways in which we conduct our relationships are really what define us as human beings and connect us more deeply to what has genuine meaning.  When we relate through roles there are expectations – rules.  When these expectations are violated we feel betrayed and the relationship “suffers.”

Life is a continuous process of birth that we can’t and don’t control yet can midwife.  We don’t always know what’s coming or how, so all we can “do” is “be” present to what emerges and breathe and feel the joy inherent the “new” life gifted to us in each moment.  There is no structure to life’s process, can be no prescription, it uniquely unfolds.  We don’t always get what we want; we always get what we need.  Here is one interpretation of the message of the recent catastrophic train derailments created by our collective consciousness for our consideration:  We are mindlessly speeding through life, following the tracks and schedules we laid out for our lives and humanity.  If we stay on our current track, we are a train wreck waiting to happen.  We need to get off our tracks.

We long to have our Light, our movement of Love, acknowledged.  We long to contribute to the ever-unfolding generation of Love, our own never-ending expansion and evolution.  Fulfillment comes when we acknowledge our own True Self as this Light.  Love is the Light in the darkness.  Ego floats in a sea of Love.

Collective transformation is a process of diffusion.  As we give ourselves permission to embrace and enact what is real and true about our human nature, we give others permission as well.

My commitment is to come out of sabbatical (I was given what I needed) and leave the rules of the roles and predefined process behind.  My soul purpose is to Serve Love:  Life in Service to Love; Love in Service to Life.  Service means living one’s own integrity (integration) for the greater good of humanity as life unfolds.  I am continuously humbled by who and what is coming in and out of my life as a reflection of my consciousness – showing me who I am at my “best” and where I can more fully be the Love that I am.

The only way we can find the answers for the truth we seek is through our individual commitment to accept personal responsibility for our lives.  ~ Adapted from Karen Berg

I hold a vision that in the near future that our oneness is honored, all viewpoints are included, all aspects of existence are upheld, honored, seen, appreciated and given voice, power, contribution, inclusion, and integration.

I encourage us all to be conscious of and live a “higher” vision for humanity – the old is in breakdown.  Live from a complete sense of Self – the totality of being – body, mind, heart and soul.  We are the creators of our experience.  We are here to create and to be guardians – servants – of our creations.  Our being is the cosmos; we are one with the universe. May This Force Be With You as we express the totality of being.  Thinking does not replace doing.  Practice.  Just show up.

Who are you now, in this moment?

What do you deeply care about?

What is your unique expression of Love, the purpose that you bring to the world?

How do you honor your innate gifts and talents?

How do you honor your contribution as co-creator and evolutionary?

How do you honor your totality of being as an embodiment, incarnation of the divine?

How do you honor your body and mind as the emissary of the heart and soul?

How do you honor your innate majesty and glory and make it your life-long commitment?